Knowing things you never dared to think
by unsubstitute
Summary: It's been a long time coming. (disclaimer: i do not own these characters or Marvel or anything other than a laptop.)


She's naked. And there's a naked Phil Coulson underneath her. They're lying on the couch in his office, sweat and other things soiling the leather. She can already picture him scrubbing it down in the morning.

"Huh...well. That was..." he stumbles, panting a bit, and sounding a little bit in awe.

She smirks. "...A long time coming."

"I was going to say really great, but yours works, too. Why haven't we been doing that for the last 25 years?"

She shifts a little, letting some air in between their bodies. "You know why," she says. She doesn't mean for it to sound so sad, but it sounds how it sounds.

He tightens the arm draped around her shoulders. She can feel him gazing at her, hear him thinking.

"What?"

He breathes and warmth flutters over her hair. "You know," he says, "when we were just starting out with this team, someone told Skye the legend of the Cavalry." She tenses beside him, a defensive reflex, but tightens his grip on her and continues, "And I told her you were a hero, but you lost a part of yourself that day," she doesn't have time to interject before he adds, "—don't worry I didn't tell her any real details—but she guessed that I recruited you for this team because I wanted to fix you, to see if I could get fun, prankster May back."

She shifts to look at his face. "Was she right?" She knows it's true, but she wants to hear him say it.

His face falls. "Of course."

She doesn't know what to do with that information. Her instinct is to get up, get angry, but something stronger than his arm holds her in place.

"At the time, she was right. But now I know my plan would never have worked."

This time she does sit up. "Sorry to disappoint," she says. She's propped herself up on his chest and is starting to move off of him when he grabs her by the bicep.

"You've never disappointed me once...well, okay, that time I thought you were an enemy spy was disappointing but I get that now so I think I can still say never and mean it."

He's using that excited Coulson tone that she finds infuriatingly hard to ignore, and so she waits for him to say whatever he has to say next. He sits up so that they're face to face again, and she thinks again about how much bleach the couch will need. When she meets his eyes, she keeps her mask on tight and waits closed-lip for him to continue.

"You're not that girl you were when you were nineteen. You're different now."

She starts to say something smart but he cuts her off, "Thank god. Thank god you're not still that girl because like you told me, I'm not still that guy. Twenty-one year old Phil was wide-eyed, and I'll admit it, a little dorky, and thought the beautiful, dangerous warrior Melinda May was the coolest person in the world. But he would've been eaten alive. And we both know it. Plus, how was I supposed to compete with Mr. Tall, Dark and Doctor? There was no way. And then after that ended, I thought maybe I could swoop in, and then Bahrain happened, and there wasn't any swooping to be done. I tried, you know I tried, but by then all I really cared about was helping you. Selfishly, maybe, because I wanted you to come back to me, but also because I loved you and wanted you to heal. And then we got on this bus, and I thought I could maybe get us back to that place where we were twenty-something and you were so damn exciting and I was head over heels, falling on my ass with the biggest crush in the history of romance. But that didn't happen. I mean, I still had the crush," he blushes the tiniest bit, and she begins a smile. "And you did change when you got here, but you didn't go back to being that girl."

She drops her head. It's been a lot of years since she cried in front of him, she has no interest in doing so now. But he puts a finger under her chin and raises her face back up. "But like I said, thank god I didn't get the old Melinda May back. Because you're right, I'm different. And this new, different Coulson would think the old May was exhausting. You'd be nothing but trouble, total pain in the ass. We'd have to lock up the night-night guns, for sure. Imagine if those had been around at the Academy!" He chuckles, and then a pained look overtakes him. "God, you were like if Skye and Hunter had a baby." His eyes go wide, "Let's please make sure _that _never happens."

She chuckles too, quietly. "I don't think you need to worry about that."

"No, I guess not. Anyway, you're right. I do know why it took us so long to get here. Because now we're finally where we need to be, for each other. We weren't ready before. You're not blowing me out of the water and I'm not trying to save you. For the first time, we're on equal ground. I'm not that dorky, googly kid, and yeah, you're still the coolest, and you're stronger and more beautiful than ever, but you're also, I don't know...more comfortable. That's it, right?"

She can feel her smirk softening. "I think so, maybe. I feel comfortable, being on this team. Even with all the insanity, with everything going on, on a day-to-day basis, I feel...happy. Or like I belong, anyway. So I guess you're right." His smile is beautiful and the love swelling in her is almost frightening, it's so strong. She wants to tell him she's loved him for decades, that he'd have had a chance, but she decides it can wait. There's no point in regret. Tonight is about hope and the future. She matches his smile as he grips her hips and leans in to kiss her.

An inch from his lips, she stops him with a hand on his chest. "You're wrong about one thing, though...you're still pretty dorky."

He gasps in mock offense, until she waves an arm around the room like a showcase model, pointing out all of his memorabilia and knick-knacks. "Well, but dorky in a cooler, handsomer way though, right?"

She rolls her eyes as she kisses him, pushing him back onto the couch. After tonight that thing is a lost cause. But screw the furniture, May thinks, as he pulls her flush against him, his thumbs rubbing circles on her skin. After all of the danger and all of the loss, she and Phil have molded themselves back together into two pieces that finally, wholly connect.


End file.
